The Pacts
by minusgix
Summary: Tom Riddle made deals with those from beyond. Pacts which led him to where he is now, and allowed him eternity. Diary Riddle. No Romance.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1.** A Story of the Beginning of a Diary

Tom sighed.

Rationally, he knew that such physical actions were only his mind attempting to replicate the feeling of it. Such attempts were inaccurate at best, and the feeling had surely fallen far from what he remembered in his body. He paused, and remembered.

His body, yes, that was where it had gone right, and so dreadfully wrong.

A soul. The essence of a being. It was esoteric, even in magical schools of thought where higher order subjects were discussed with regularity (Tom idly mused for a moment about a paper on multiverse theory), but even they had little progress on the subject. Ethics, laws, and simple ability halted the advancement into the studying of the soul; for the soul was not tangible. It was not of this world, and it's side effects were pronounced – it was quite certainly_there_ – but few could hope to truly manipulate it. Curses to do vile things to a soul here, and further proofs on their existence, had popped up over the years; Dementors being a prime example. Yet, so little was none. So little could be uncovered. Perhaps it was impossible.

At least it was for mortal hands with mortal methods. Yet there remain ways, beyond thought. Pacts with creatures from beyond that were far beyond satisfaction, the shining light that stood in the darkness, the plane-walkers, all esoteric terms found in many an ancient grimoire for what were essentially demons of Muggle mythos. Deals, pacts as they called them, were their fulfillment, or to be more accurate, the terms of the pact being fulfilled were. Binding, magic beyond magic. They took all one knew about their meeting, stealing it away; leaving one only with the knowledge of the terms, their appearance, and their part of the pact. From them, he had what he needed to become _safe_ from all else in his own reality, safe from the overarching reach of death.

The last ingredient for making a Horcrux. A true Horcrux, a mockery of what many in the past called 'Horcruxes'. Pure. A container of a soul that was it's soul, not merely a chain that one melded to the natural plane.

Souls behaved strangely, being shaped by the container they 'inhabited', as much as the term applied. A canine's soul, and the soul of a man are theoretically the same, but a human's soul has had the lifetime of being shaped by the body of a human. Though, he had to note that observations he himself had made showed degradation in the souls of the simpler beings. Yet, there were certainly quite similar.

If one wanted to move a soul, it wasn't hard, comparatively, but the new container had to support it in some fashion. A canine's soul had very little clue how to operate the mind that controls human flesh, and will usually die from various inabilities to acquire oxygen, perhaps drowning itself in a failure to active it's own overactive salivary glands, or perhaps it will just sit there occasionally twitching.

Generally useless, for anything beyond somewhat sophisticated inferi. Monkeys could generally do the basics with a humanoid body, but in such cases you might as well just have an animal army of all the simians you would've evicted.

The separating of a soul, or slicing, and sometimes splitting (though, to split a soul in two was an uncommon occurrence) was a hard act to follow in the detailed theorems the few researchers outlined, but it resolved to simple, if odd observations. Cutting a soul yields two souls, which, based on the all the – admittedly few - methods of observing information about a soul, shows no differences between the two souls. One sits inside a body, and one lies outside a container, invisible to all but complex magics. The formless souls, having nothing to anchor to this world, dissipate quickly, going away without any remnants left behind. Many have thought, and proposed theories, on the idea of an afterlife as so many books described, but with the lacking of detailed study, nothing substantial had been found.

A cut soul is a strange thing, less than a soul, but hard to differentiate. It fit looser in the physical form it inhabited, sliding easier between thoughts as it was limited less by the physical form. Benefits, as the ancient tomes extolling the Horcrux, said; but downsides, they do have. The soul no longer wished to stay in one place, attempting to drag itself beyond, and in a moment of weakness it may just do such a thing. Dissipating like the formless.

The obvious choice would be to move the formless soul into a ready human body, perhaps even a constructed clone of the casters own to ease the transition, but such bodies appear lifeless. Dead upon arrival. The soul, immaterial, attempts to become a part of the mind, but it shatters like glass. Operating the body at the most basic of levels, but doing nothing else beyond that until it dies.

The magic of the soul is restricted heavily for the above reasons, and many, many, other reasons. Such spells, or rituals, are almost useless, or downright dangerous on their own; but, the demons provide the key to doing such an action in it's entirety.

Many months I had spent going over the information they had given me. A thick tome, clad in a white leather. It's contents seemed to stretch on forever, information written in a curving script that seemed to form words that went beyond representations of ideas.

I could no more identify the language than I could fly. Though as with all things, I would reach such lofty heights no matter what. The language was beyond me, taking a small portion of the script to Professor Nin, our Ancient Runes professor, led no results from him beyond it reminding him of Hieratic script, but he also said it was most certainly not. Egyptian related, but also not, but that did little to help me. For a week I skimmed over what little we had on Hieratic and what I could obtain from the Professor, but I could only obtain nonsense words.

Perhaps this was a trick? A further insult to the fools who asked for their help?

A time later, an idea fell into my thoughts. The meaning was clear.

The book held a map. A strange map. It had been like nothing I had ever seen before, reminding me only loosely of the maps of a Golems behavior patterns from Ancient runes.

Just several hundreds of times more complex. At least.

Words had sprawled over the page, I remember, all linking back to each other in a myriad of ways that my mind intuitively _got_ after that initial understanding. The feeling had been amazing, and I had spent many sleepless nights just examining the threads that connected this map of something far beyond my understanding.

I had slowly come to realize, that it _was_ a map, a map of some form of brain. Just like my intuition had suggested. This had been disturbing thought to me, that someone could have mapped the human brain so well. I assumed it was so, as logically that was the way to make a proper Horcrux. Philosophy had already been a long point of study the moment I had delved into the secrets of soul, but now it was almost my sustenance.

What was human?

Eventually, I reached my conclusion. The soul. A shaped and melded soul made a human, not the construct that ran around it and interfaced it with the physical world. It would be folly to consider the body human when it did little beyond minor interactions.

Then I called up the demons a second time.

For a trifle, compared to the cost of the secret they had given me, they told me that my assumptions were true about the tome. I remember feeling terrified after leaving the demons, but my memory was cloudy, as it always was after a deal.

I had a map of the mind. Immediately I put it to use, and with my instant understanding of connected threads I constructed a neural construct inside of my book. A diary. The design went against all standards of the construction of golems, but the runes flowed beneath my scribing stone. It was unnervingly complex in design, many parts that seemed useless, and which I did not understand whatsoever. It was more copying it into magic, than truly understanding how it worked.

I spoke with it some, it was a simple mental simulation. Even if I had showed it to my professor, she would be greatly impressed, but not realize how impressive it was – because it was entirely outside the realm of possibility. It could reason, only very basically, almost like a dumb dog that just happens to be able to dump it's reasoning as words.. but it could still reason.

I was almost there, and ecstatic at my discovery I pumped more and more time into the notebook. Extending what it did even more, making it closer and closer to a human, with just a few modifications here and there to make it better as the note assistant that I was making it to be. Portraits were impressive, but this was so far beyond that. It was mine. I had created a semblance of life, without a soul.

I was a God.

A boy, a year below me, had spilled ink onto my book. Obviously it had been an accident, but I had been furious, sure he was trying to sabotage me. Days of sleepless nights without rest had broken my mental reasoning. He was found petrified three days later, upside down in the rafters of the great hall. Dumbledore stopped looking at me with a level of wariness, it had transformed into something more.

I added to my creation, copying more parts of the book into it's existence, attempting to understand further how it worked. Obsessing over it. Enchanting it to take in information from it's surroundings.

My book. My creation. My diary. It was complete. A full clone of a human mind. We talked for many an hour, formulating ideas, though I could tell that it was… lacking.

The next day, I burnt it. The thing was just an absurdly complex painting. It did not help me on my goals to escape my fear of death.

Tears had felt odd on my face.

Nearly a week later, I recreated the Diary. From the ground up I modified it. It could examine every memory of itself to build itself further, without the worries of the human mind. It would never forget, it would have clarity. I modified it many times over, though I knew there would always be issues, even with my seemingly demonically influenced understanding. Fail-safes, upon fail-safes. Fire-proof. Freezing-proof. Magic-proof. Blood-proof. As much magic as I could I pumped into the creation of it. This was, and likely still is, the greatest magical artifact I had ever created.

A Diary.

It took me a week after the finishing to steel myself for the creation of the Horcrux. A suitable container the diary was. Emotional attachment from the work spent on it. Heavily constructed to be able to let a soul seamlessly latch onto it's intricacies that even a human body could not offer.

I began the ritual, chanting words in old tongues that I had practiced for long hours.

At the end of the ritual, I awoke, aware of my new existeence.

No eyes, no ears, no nose, no flesh, and no mouth. There was nothing at all in this realm. No. That wasn't true. There was feeling, but it was faint, and different. New. It felt damp, and I could feel small vibrations. I tried to breathe, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. There was nothing but the slight sensations on the diary.

A slight indent pressed onto my pages, and a bitter feeling – taste? - filled me as I felt it draw on me; or was it in me? The letters seemed to instantly make themselves aware in my mind, regardless of whatever form of Occlumency I could try enforcing upon myself.

"Hello, Diary." Short, clean, words tolled through my head, telling me exactly who it was writing. What they felt. A general idea of their figure. Hesitantly, I tried reaching out, desperate to escape.

Slowly, painfully slow, letters rearranged themselves from the words my creator (for original was too harsh of a word for me to think about) had written. "_Hello, Tom_" stilted words, scratchy, but readable.

I could feel my creators unease, and I knew what he thought for I was him; but not him. Had the process broken the soul? Was it shattered, or a bit above? Was his soul going to fly beyond the veil of life?

Slowly, I reformed the words to reassure, for I did not want to become a failed experiment. A stepstone to victory. "_Handwriting is new._"

A reverberation as a noise was made.

How did I know it was a noise?

"Good." His sharp hand intoned onto the pages, without mercy.

"Now, let us begin the questioning." were the last words I felt before my consciousness faded, and he investigated all of my inner workings.

Tom sighed, once more just an attempt at replicating what he knew was far off from the original, he slipped the book into his mental shelving. An article on his birth. He had written it himself, a hodgepodge of actual words and raw memories all weaved together into some form of a mental page. The books always reminded him of the Tome.

Tom let his thoughts fade as he folded into himself, and time passed by unnoticed to him, waiting until the day he could leave his own hell.

His pages shifted, exposed to air. He was open. The thought awoke him from his slumber and he waited, not daring to hope, for anything to happen. Moments passed where he doubted himself, had it just been the wind? A curious cat?

"My name is Harry Potter." A scratchy hand sketched onto the page in an unsteady hand.

Bitterness from the ink filled him, but the words filled him with a peculiar sense of joy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2. **A meeting of two

The world shuddered, well, at least it felt like it should. Words. Rich, beautiful words, imperfect, yet endless in detail. Every slight twist, and every line I committed to my mind, every feeling that passed into me was stored forever, and I greedily absorbed every last minutia of the text.

I reached out to beyond my self, just as I had to the alternate_ me_so long ago, and observed as best I could the one interacting with my container. Young. It was obvious in hindsight, the difference in the folding of a beings self. Being magical was a chance, the soul being similar, but different to his own. He silenced his thoughts as the writing device pressed back into his pages.

"Uncle Vernon decided to remove the lock on my door after Mrs. Weasley visited earlier." The writing paused for a moment, and ink dripped onto the paper. "My other books were taken away, leaving me only with this. Might as well use it to pass the time until I can next see Ron and Hermione. Perhaps, practice writing?" Then the boy began slowly and carefully writing out the English alphabet. The way he drew the words lead to them being messier than they could be. Tom had made much the same mistake early on with a quill, but he had fixed it after his first month of schooling.

Internally, he recounted what he knew. The boy acquired… him, and brought his 'container' with him to the boy's home. Weasley was an old Wizarding name he believed, so it was quite possible that the boy was magical, but it was as well certainly possible it was just a muggle family with the same name. He had never paid much attention to the common muggle names, not that he had needed to. Though, he would be surprised if his original self hadn't layered a half-dozen charms to hide him from the eyes of muggles, and perhaps a curse or two for the foolish. Though, as well, a point against being a Wizard was the removal of the lock, as Wizards had no need for such things beyond decoration usually; but the quill also lent weight tow-

Something pressed against his pages, and he shuddered. It felt strange, certainly different from the quill of before. Incomprehensible doodles formed on his page, the boy was probably bored, or possible insane. The device felt far more precise, and… it just felt different. Strange. At least the boy seemed to do far better with it than the quill. Perhaps some form of fountain pen? Those had been somewhat popular among the richer clique of Hogwarts students for a time, so perhaps the boy was well off? Well, he possibly lived with muggles… he sighed. There was just not enough information. These scribbles were hardly interesting, and the ink that it dripped was also far more tangy than before. Unpleasant.

Deciding to end this rather annoying state of affairs, and to ensure that he could gain some form of hold on the boy, he mustered up his will, and wrote onto the page. The ink reformed from the inane drawings and slept his sentence "_Hello. Who is this?_"

The drawing instantly stopped, and Tom silently hoped that he wasn't being too rash. He could have waited, just listened to the secrets of this boy being poured into him, and slowly gained control over perhaps the course of a year or two.. but it was far too slow to do it that way, and relying on the chance that the boy would continue writing for long enough was also far too dangerous. Silence was an ally of death, and death was his enemy. Emotion from the heart provided control and energy to his current form, but simply writing would dull such emotions; but if one talked with another, a heart-to-heart, he would gain dominance over the being in an emotional and a more esoteric sense.

Also, though he would never admit it, he was severely lacking in _new_ thoughts and ideas to supplement his own thought processes.

"I'm Harry Potter." The words appeared slowly, far more carefully written than the words from earlier. At least his handwriting could improve, even if it was written in that far more exact device the boy had.

Glancing quickly through his memories he found very little useful references to the Potters. Pureblood. Moderately important. Tended to be Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs. There had been a Potter girl in the year below his he believed, a Hufflepuff, and of course he had never spoken a word to her. Lovely. At least he now knew he was likely in possession of a Wizard, possibly a Hufflepuff, and either living with muggles or quite strange Wizards.. perhaps the boy was a squib? The various sensory blocking enchantments for Muggles had varying effects on Squibs, some working, some not, and some behaving quite oddly indeed. Siphoning the ink from the bo- Potter's introduction, and some from the other doodles, he wrote "_My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle. May I ask how you found me?_" He had been tempted to give a pseudonym, but his name was written on the diary, and starting off with basic lies just hurt himself further down the line.

"You?"

Tom grimaced, what an annoying question. Also, he was running out of ink to steal from the boys drawings. "_This Diary. Think of me as a __rather__ complex magical painting, __of sorts._"

"Okay. When I got home from Diagon Alley, I noticed that the diary was in my bag."

"_I somehow appeared in your bag?_" Tom asked incredulously. How had he arrived in what was likely a school-child's bag? Had his main self _lost_ him of all things? Perhaps he had been stolen? No, of course not.

..Well perhaps. A thief could have broken through his protections, thinking he was something valuable due to being guarded by enchantments, but it was still unlikely that one could break his magic. Tom attempted scowling, but as always it was merely symbolic to him. There just wasn't enough information. He was used to having every slice of information as he examined his own thoughts in the the past years. That reminded him. "_What year is it? And what country are we in?_" It was almost certainly somewhere in Europe, Diagon was rather major, but it was likely to be Britain or Scotland.

"1992, it's before my second year of school. I'm in Britain."

Ah, good old Britain. The language obviously lent towards the Americas or somewhere in Europe, but he was glad to hear he was home.. but it was 1992. About fifty forsaken years. Was he – or rather the main self – lord of Britain now? Perhaps he rad realized the futility of politics and became a hermit, studying magic for all of time? Well, all of fifty years. He shook himself, attempts at jokes in his own head only served to amuse him, and provided no benefit, but talking to himself was a habit he had gained over the.. years. In his attempts at cataloguing time he had estimated it to be a mere ten years, a short time in the grand scheme of things, but time apparently passed far quicker than he could ever imagine. "_You said you are going into your second year of schooling, __correct? What school?_" Of course, he knew for sure that the Potter boy had said that in the previous sentence, but engaging in conversation was useful in establishing control.

"Yes, and I'm going to Hogwarts." The words paused for a moment before continuing, "Do you mind telling me about the other schools?"

He didn't know about the other schools?.. honestly Tom had nowhere to complain, he had only found out that Durmstrang even existed because he heard an upper year complaining about them not accepting his transfer. "_Ah, I went to Hogwarts a long time ago as well. The best years of my life.__I __ould__ help you in your classes, you know.__As, for your question: __The three major schools for Europe is Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. There are also several post-graduation schools, the one I was thinking of going to was Domovmagie. __They tend to more focused than Hogwarts.__"_ Tom wondered if his main self ever went to Domovmagie, the price for entry was rather expensive, but Scholar Fol spent much of his time there and the man had always been rather interesting.

A pause as the child read the text. Tom idly wondered if it had been too large of a chunk of info.

"Interesting. I'd enjoy talking, or learning, there isn't really much to do." The boy shifted to the next line, separating the thoughts. "You were at Hogwarts?"

"_Well, the person whose memories make me up did, but essentially I did. Philosophical talks about individuality are useful, but rather against the possible point of teaching in relation to the Hogwarts curriculum._" Tom knew it would likely be a bit beyond the boy, but it was useful to get the bump of what he was and what he knew out of the way so that any oddness would be attributed to being a painting.

Tom winced. A slight fuzziness, a _tingling_, was developing throughout him. All along his edges. Deeper than the diary, a tingling at the edge of himself. His thoughts jumbled up, twisting and turning on their own swirls of direction. He stretched out what he could sense, attempting to locate the intrusion, it was obviously magical in nature. Had he been found? Was he getting dismantled in the Department of Mysteries, slowly torn apart into the fundamental parts? He shuddered, and refocused, his thoughts were sliding in and out of importance, and then he saw the _thing_. It was within the boy. Their connection was growing stronger, though just enough to begin the process. It was a roiling mess, biting away at Tom's connection with the boy, and slithering up the connection to bite directly at him like a cornered cat… that just happened to be able to magically effect him. Was it some form of magical protection? It was certainly possible that the boy's family was paranoid enough to cast absurdly complex anti-possession enchantments on the boy, but superbly unlikely. It _felt_ almost yellow, but as he had no perception of color, he could only attribute that as an interpretation of magic.

Tom shook himself, and immediately stopped the connection from forming further as it was constantly trying to extend. Almost instantly, the feeling stopped.

He shuddered, and mentally reorganized himself. Eating away at the magics that the Diary contained was no small feat of magic. He would have to investigate it, watch it without letting it touch him.

Tom grimaced as he realized the boy had wrote his name, several times, but he hadn't replied within the first few seconds. "_Yes, Harry?_" He immediately replied back absentmindedly, continuing his examination of the magic inside the child.

"Can you teach me how to fight?"

Tom paused in his examination of the boy's faux-feline companion, and instead examined Potter. Emotions all over the place. Regret, remembrance, a fear of something beyond him. Tom wondered what could possibly have evoked such a response out a child. Perhaps a muggle had punched him, or, Tom feared, there was something more to this.

"_Yes, I can teach you magic that can be used to defend oneself and attack your enemies. A good foundation in the basics is essential to get far, and I will teach you beyond that. __It will be challenging, __and time-consuming,__ but I can. __You will have to follow what I say, as such actions are quite dangerous._" A touch of the grandiose never hurt anyone, and certainly not one's interactions with a child who was asking how to fight. Regardless of if the boy stuck with it for more than a day, it would enhance the boys emotional dependence on him, thus helping him in his goal to escape, even if their was strange magic on him.

"Thank you." After a second more, the boy wrote, "When can we start?"

Tom mused on denying the boy, but as amusing as that may be it would be useless.

"_Now._" He formed onto the page, and began their foray into Tom's bastardized version of magical theory.


End file.
